A "white whale" is a slang term for an object that is highly desired and obsessively chased despite the difficulty of doing so.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.10
- Aims for fastest time
- Heavy glitch abuse
- Corrupts memory
- If I was funnier I'd just copy/paste what I wrote in my previous submission text
- Good thing I've never been funny in my life
WARNING
The final boss is chock full of rapidly flashing lights.
Sweet Home is a game.
I'll write something funny later ._.
This is either a 109330 frame improvement over
[2352] NES Sweet Home by K in 40:05.09 or a fun new heavily glitched branch. Who wants to decide that? I'm sure it'll be fun and that I won't have very biased opinions on it!
Remember two years ago when I submitted an 8 minute slower run and claimed I had no idea what was going on in it? Well, I miss those days. I miss somehow knowing both much more and much less about how this game operates. I still don't know technical information or internals, because I'm Samsara, but h*ck in a h*ndbasket can I awkwardly joke my way through a bunch of stuff regardless!
Coauthorship and My History with Sweet Home
This run's journey started shortly after the cancellation of
my previous submission, when
Steven Q-Beatz brought some newly discovered glitches to my attention. These were discovered and routed into a new RTA record by RTA runner
kill_me, who proceeded to expand upon them with even more new discoveries into
this run, which is the basis of the current RTA route and the original route I was TASing back in 2023.
The more I looked into the new glitches, the more I was discovering on my own, though each new discovery was both a blessing and a curse. I knew the RTA route wasn't going to be the fastest for a TAS, but every new discovery I made just prompted new questions as to what the best TAS route could be. To this day, there are still discoveries I've made that don't currently have any explanations, and could still lead to further huge timesaves even over this run.
The thought of creating a perfect TAS route consumed me. I worked on theorycrafting for months straight, manually testing my ideas by hand. Most of the time, they would work fine in testing and then completely die when optimized. Sometimes, they'd only ever work once no matter what. After about a year of work, I finally decided to take a step back, partially due to burnout, but partially due to my life getting too chaotic for it. I'd still open the game every now and then and mess around, but it wasn't even close to every day like it was before.
I had, very quietly, picked the game back up after AmaizumiUni's first submission, fearing that I hadn't made relevant information to the run public enough for others to find and use. I started looking back into my old route ideas, old branches on a two year old TASPROJ with test ideas in progress, and after some further testing, two ideas seemed to actually be viable for a new TAS, so I got to work.
The improvement war continued, each time inspiring me further to keep looking into my own discoveries, if just for the opportunity to finally publicize all the findings I had made and (sort of accidentally) kept hidden for so long. While doing this, I accidentally stumbled upon a third potential idea for an improvement. Finally feeling motivated to work on the game again, I started work on a brand new input file.
Setback after setback, broken glitch after broken glitch, it took until the morning of June 5th, 2025 to finally piece together what I needed to finish out the run. I managed to get all three of my ideas to work, and while this final result wasn't the sub-10 I had dreamed of, it is still the run that I had been searching for from the beginning.
Without kill_me's original research, discoveries, and routing, without stevenqbeatz informing me of said discoveries, without AmaizumiUni's original submission and the ensuing improvement war it caused, this submission would not exist. The culmination of over two years of our collective work on this game would not be seen like this. They're as much a part of this run as I am. I can't thank them enough for helping me finish this and making it so much better than it would've been if it had just been me.
In lieu of my usual submission text format of starting with tricks and moving into the run itself, I'm going to go straight into the run and explain everything as it comes up, as I feel that will be easier for me to write and for you to digest. I may put together an explanation video in the future as well, but don't hold me to that.
The Run
Prenote
Hi, it's me, Samsara from several days after I wrote this entire section. This was written for
the original 10:03 submission from June 5th, 2025, and as such contains outdated information. All improvements implemented in the 9:46 update are listed in the section after this.
Pregame and Basic Mechanics
At the beginning of the game, the step counter is initialized to 30.
Sweet Home takes an RPG-like step counter approach to random encounters. After every battle, it rolls a number between 11 and 75, represented in the address as 10 to 74 since it usually has to drop below 0 for a fight to trigger. The counter is, naturally, manipulated high as often as possible in order to minimize encounters throughout the run, though as you'll see later it's not always convenient.
Manipulating the few bits of RNG in the game, such as the step counter, the enemy encounter, the attacks performed by enemies, and how much damage your characters do, is simply waiting frames. Save for the step counter, everything cycles in the same way: The damage you do to an enemy will increase by 1 every frame until it hits a maximum value, then it rolls back down to a minimum value and repeats. Enemy encounters will cycle through a pattern set by the encounter table, usually just a handful of frames for each enemy. Attacks should be the same way, though there's precisely one time in the entire run where enemy attack manipulation is worthwhile so I'll talk about it later.
The step counter doesn't seem to have a set pattern, at least not one that I know of. You're usually not too far from a 70+ value, though it may take upwards of a full second or so to max it out. It's generally best to take the first 70+ you see unless there's a higher value within 5-10 frames of it.
There are certain areas in the game that I call "safe areas", where the step counter does not decrease no matter how much you move. These can be entire rooms or just parts of rooms, and they're a blessing whenever they're around.
Last quick note: There's one way to beat the step counter that I'll talk about when it first comes up in the run.
Intro and First Floor (1)
Anyone who's been following Sweet Home speedrunning is probably familiar with the first couple minutes of this run, as it hasn't changed too much since the beginning. Kazuo moves down and joins up with Akiko. Asuka is switched to so she can vacuum up the broken glass in front of the door, then she moves out of the way. Emi is switched to, joins up with Kazuo and Akiko, and the trio set off into the first floor proper.
Unlike my previous submission, the Tonic in the left room isn't grabbed. I still don't know why it was needed in that submission and not any other time. Get used to seeing "I don't know why doing X makes Y work sometimes", by the way. It's the sole reason this was a two year long journey instead of being a two year old publication. Entering the right room takes us out of safe areas for the first time and starts running down the step counter. Kazuo, for the first and only time in this run, burns the rope, killing the Grinning Colossus below.
The first Wood, hereafter referred to as just a board, is grabbed after deftly avoiding a spirit by waiting slightly for it to continue down its linear path. This board is immediately used to oneshot the Evil Doll that pops up very shortly afterward. Combined with its eventual fate, this board is arguably the most important thing in the entire run. A step counter of 57 is manipulated for maximum efficiency, one of the rare times in the run where it's better to be below 70. We move through the room and grab the White Wood, which is a much stronger version of the board.
Here's a quick trick: Whenever we have to interact with something specific, such as picking up items, we want to make sure we're approaching it directly. You can bring up the menu one frame earlier than your next movement, so any time you turn to interact with something, you're forced to wait that extra frame so the turn goes through.
After leaving the way we came, we have 4 steps left on the counter. The whole area below the pit is a safe area, so we're clear to set up the boards as we please. The White Wood is placed on the left, and our hero the normal board is placed on the right.
Here's where everything about this game starts to go wrong.
The Board Glitch + Party Management
I believe this was discovered by K, or at least their video from 2016 is where I first learned about it and started taking an interest in this game. It is, without a doubt, the most volatile and powerful glitch I have ever worked with in a TAS.
To start with a bit of tech: This game heavily revolves around items, and this TAS, like most TASes, heavily revolves around saving time. Loading the item menu with a full party takes more time than loading the item menu with only one or two characters. You don't have to be in a party to load other characters' items, you just have to be standing next to them, and it will only load you and the other character into the item menu. This means that whenever we have to do item management while disbanded, we want to do it before rejoining, as it saves a handful of frames. This is done by disbanding Emi before placing down the board, as she needs to disband here anyway.
Emi takes precisely one (1) step onto the weaker board before joining back up with them. This decrements the step counter by 1, as the pit is right where the safe area ends. She then steps back onto the board, past the board, and settles back on the board with Akiko, decrementing the step counter by another 2. We only have two steps left before an encounter, and the board is on its final breath. The next time someone steps off of it, it will break.
Kazuo's in the unsafe area, so he does the rational thing of leaving the party and walking down onto the White Wood, triggering a battle in this very specific spot. This is the last time you will ever see the normal pre-fight fadeout and hear the music sting.
Kazuo calls out for Emi. Calling is a battle command that allows you to briefly control a character outside of the current battle, with the intent of bringing them to the location of the battle to join it. Genuinely a pretty neat mechanic! It actually allows for all five characters to be in a battle at once if you really wanted to take the time to coordinate that. It also, in two circumstances, COMPLETELY breaks the game. This is the first.
In this case, though, Kazuo just calls out for his daughter who is literally right next to him, and she happily joins this battle. Kazuo rewards her by immediately running away. Emi, taking after her father but on a slight delay, calls out for Akiko, who is literally standing on the same tile as her. Akiko has had enough of these calling shenanigans and promptly moves one space to the south, breaking the board and sending Emi into a pit. She stays out of the battle. Emi is now both in the battle and in the pit, which is a state the game never expected you to get into. After Emi runs away, the encounter ends. Kazuo "rescues" Emi from the pit, putting her "back on land". She's still in the pit state, but is now with Kazuo and follows him as he moves, even though that means she travels through the ground. Kazuo then joins up with Akiko as if nothing is wrong and starts moving down toward the entrance, with his daughter land sharking behind him. We then switch to Taguchi, who actually rescues Emi from the "pit", putting her back on land for real and adding her to his party.
We have successfully reached the first point of "oh god what's happening".
Board Glitch Roundup: Caterpillar System, Party Glitch, Move Glitch, Speed Glitch
You've been seeing it all throughout the run, but I'm using this opportunity to explain it because this is where it starts really coming into play. The game uses a caterpillar system for field movement, where your full party is on the map following behind the leader. It's cute, yes, but it means those characters are always there, ready to be banded and disbanded from as you please. This system, innocent as it may seem, is what truly makes the board glitch shine as a speedrun tool.
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that I never mentioned Emi leaving the Kazuo/Akiko party before being pulled into Taguchi's, and that's because she didn't. She's now technically in both parties at the same time. More accurately, she is effectively psychically linked to Taguchi for the rest of the run. Whenever we're controlling her, she's considered to be in the Kazuo/Akiko party. She can freely leave them and rejoin them as she pleases. Whenever we're controlling Taguchi, however, she's considered to be in his party.
Remember two paragraphs ago when I randomly explained the caterpillar system? Whenever Taguchi moves, Emi will follow his movements on a one move delay as if she was following directly behind him, i.e whenever Taguchi moves, she will mimic his previous move. This happens no matter where they are on the map. Whether they're in the same room or on opposite ends of the mansion, Emi is bound by the caterpillar system to follow Taguchi's movement no matter what. This includes going out of bounds.
There is actually a very notable difference between them being in the same room and them being in different rooms: When they're in the same room, Emi will follow Taguchi's movements in real time, which means if she happens to move into a non-walkable tile, she will fall in. The game treats most non-walkable tiles as pits, the exceptions being those with removable obstacles as they are technically still walkable tiles.
When the two are in different rooms, however, Emi's position will only update when switching back to her. This means she can be moved as far out of bounds as she wants by Taguchi, and as long as he moves her back in-bounds before switching back, she'll be fine.
So now, for the entire rest of the game, Taguchi can now be used to move Emi past physical barriers in the world. This, by itself, is extremely powerful, but there's still more to it.
Emi is also now twice as fast as every other character by virtue of the board glitch. Where the other four can only move once every 10 frames, Emi is now locked in at moving once every 5 frames. This is naturally incredibly useful for a speedrun, but...
Remember four paragraphs ago when I randomly explained the caterpillar system?
It is specifically Emi that gets the double movement speed. When she's with Kazuo and Akiko and leading the party, she will still have her doubled speed, but Kazuo and Akiko will not. They will try to follow as best as they can, but they're comparing to a teenage girl moving at quite literally twice their max speed. In the same way that Taguchi and Emi in the same room can make Emi move out of bounds, Emi's doubled speed can easily make it so Kazuo and Akiko get moved out of bounds just by trying to keep up. More often, however, they will get desynced from the movement grid, which prevents you from opening the menu. This limits Emi's movement ability when she's partying up with them, as you need to ensure that Kazuo and Akiko remain both in-bounds and in line with the movement grid.
Of course, Emi doesn't care about that when she's on her own. We'll get to that shortly. For now, let's actually continue with the run.
First Floor (2)
We put Akiko in control here and move north, up a set of stairs you'll be seeing again later, and we park this party on a bridge. Control is very briefly passed to Emi to put her at the head of the party, before we switch to Taguchi for the first proper move glitch. He moves three squares north. Since his previous move was south, Emi's first move is south. She then moves north, putting her back where she was, and north once again, putting her one space above the bridge, on the ground. When we switch back to her, she can carefully move north a couple times to bring Kazuo and Akiko down to her level before she disbands from them and can move at her full doubled glory.
Emi moves west under a bigger bridge, control is switched to Taguchi, who moves one space south, moving Emi north. While there's technically a wall to Emi's north, she is considered to have moved onto the bridge as opposed to into the wall. This allows her to grab the Silver Sword, a powerful late game weapon, far earlier than intended. Remember this spot, by the way. We'll be coming back later.
Emi gets move glitched back down to ground level. For those of you familiar with the previous submissions of this game, this is where the route diverges. Instead of joining back up with Kazuo and Akiko, Emi instead moves past them and into a nearby open room. In this room, Emi gets move glitched past a trigger area that would cause a huge patch of rubble to form in the center of the room, and she grabs the Polaroid at the bottom. This may not seem like a key item now, but just you wait until later. Then you can come back to this line and groan at a pun that you don't even know is a pun yet. We move glitch past the trigger once again and leave the room, getting into a battle on the way back to Kazuo and Akiko. In this battle, Emi chooses to attack, Akiko chooses to attack, Kazuo chooses to attack, and Emi chooses to attack.
...Yes, indeed, there are now permanent copies of Emi, Akiko and Kazuo in every fight from here on out. They're not "full" copies. If the actual character is in the party, then the clone's moves won't count, so Emi's extra copy here is effectively useless, but Akiko and Kazuo can contribute as "normal". Emi's Silver Sword makes quick work of the enemy. Cloned characters get EXP "normally", so the party all gain their first levels! Emi, being in the battle twice, gets double EXP here. You'll be shocked to discover that this isn't as useful as it sounds for a game that requires levelling up, but we'll get to that. Another specific step counter value is manipulated, though unfortunately not as specific as I would have liked since I couldn't find the exact value in the rotation at all. Ten frames will be lost a couple rooms from now. Fs in the chat in advance for those ten frames.
Emi passes the Polaroid over to Akiko before rejoining, and the party move into the locked door to the north, using Emi's Key to unlock it after a quick and very specifically timed save/reset. This is necessary for the next battle, and once again I'll explain why later, along with why it was done specifically here.
We don't spend a lot of time in the next room, just move glitching past the broken glass on the stairs before going up to the second floor proper. Emi disbands from the party once again, grabbing a hidden Hammer from the table, and then immediately proceeding to lose those 10 frames I mentioned earlier by taking an extra step north. She rejoins with the others, passes her Silver Sword over to Kazuo, and we get into a perfectly normal fight with a Zombie that has absolutely no implications for the rest of the run.
Cloned party members are always the first ones in battle, so we just move past them as quickly as possible to get to the actual ones. Emi calls out for Asuka, Akiko uses her Medkit, and Kazuo prays for a very specific value.
Let me talk about praying for a sec, in lieu of explaining why those exact choices were made. Praying is an integral part of the game. It's an attack in battle, it helps solve some puzzles including the final puzzle of the game, and it helps with scripted trap encounters by being the fastest way to dodge them.
The most notable thing about prayers is that the number of points you can pray for is directly tied to your character's level. Each level increases your cap and lets you pray harder, and harder prayers are required to beat the game. The minimum required character level to beat the game normally is 16, just shy of the level cap of 20, as you need 82 prayer points for the final puzzle, and level 16 gives you 85 to work with. This does technically mean that if you can skip the final puzzle, you only need to be level 15, as the final boss requires the exact 80 prayer points you have at that level, but currently there's no way to skip the final puzzle.
Back to the battle at hand, Asuka gets switched to because of being called, and she actually seems to make an effort to try and join the battle, leaving the room and heading north to try and grab an Ax, but she ends up just staring at it for a second before we jump back to the battle.
Akiko's Medkit does nothing, but Kazuo's Silver Sword assisted prayer hits and kills the Zombie. For our efforts, everyone gets two sets of 17 EXP, and the party levels up! Emi even gets a second level, which isn't normally possible! Even Asuka levels up despite not having joined the battle! Even some literal no name gets a level...? Taguchi levels up despite not being involved in any way... Kazuo's up to like 6 levels now... Why isn't this stopping?
The Item Glitch, Or The Glitch That's So Powerful And Volatile That It Is By Itself The Sole Reason This Run Took Two Years To Even Get To This Point
Nothing is correct anymore.
As a fair warning, I'm going to do an incredibly bad job at explaining what's going on. Like I said, this by itself is why I wasn't able to have a completed run until over two years after this particular board glitch side effect was discovered. This is why
kill_me is credited as a co-author: They're the architect behind this upcoming set of glitches. At no point would I have ever dreamed of any of this being possible, and now we're at a point in this game where we've probably only scratched the surface as to what's truly possible with it. I was somehow able to cobble together some of my own improvements to their original RTA route, but without that original route, this run would not exist. It would just be a 16:XX or so using the same general route as my first submission.
Let's get into this.
What's currently happening is that whenever certain glitched level ups happen, arbitrary values get written to various memory addresses. Most notably, this includes our characters' inventory slots. Pretty much every action you can take affects what addresses get written to and what values get written to them. Sometimes the values are added onto the previous values, sometimes the values directly overwrite the previous values. There's almost no rhyme or reason to this. There's occasional consistency, which is why there's an RTA route to begin with, but outside of that, every action I took between the board glitch and now was taken specifically to allow the rest of this route to work. All because of this glitch.
Kazuo gets the Diary as a result of this glitch, one of the four items required to defeat the final boss. The Polaroid in Akiko's inventory becomes the Twin Keys, and now you can go back to where I get it and groan at the "key item" pun that you now know is a pun. Avoiding the rubble trigger both on the way in and on the way out of that room was done because otherwise the Diary gets overwritten by a different item. The Hammer I grabbed from under the table just before this fight becomes the Amulet, another item required for the final boss. That very specifically timed reset from earlier was done to prevent what would have otherwise been an upcoming softlock. Asuka needed to be moved north out of the room because otherwise the Amulet wouldn't have been written into the inventory. She didn't have to move over to the Ax, but there's no time loss for doing so. Kazuo needed to pray at specifically that strength or else the Twin Keys wouldn't have been written into the inventory.
Kazuo's prayer here, in particular, can lead to wildly different effects based on the strength. One specific strength level actually just... fixes the glitch and ends the battle normally. Two of them outright crash the game. Most of them just write different items into the inventory, and aren't that useful. Asuka's map position has also, in other testing, led to
outright teleportation. It's possible to get into a state where
you can just select attack on cloned party members for minutes straight, which affects your inventory in real time. I still don't know exactly how I triggered either of those last two things, and they're on heavily unoptimized test files either way so they might not even be guaranteed to work in an optimized environment.
There's SO MUCH to this glitch. I wouldn't be surprised if someone much more tech-savvy could come in and absolutely clean house with it, but at this point I'd be shocked if there was anything else that actually worked given how much breaks.
Speaking of how much breaks, let's take stock of what changed during this battle real quick.
Item Glitch Roundup: Level Glitch, Item Shuffling, Broken Things
Kazuo is sitting at 20441 XP. His Lighter and Silver Sword were untouched, and the Diary is in his first inventory slot.
Akiko has 50370 XP. Her Medkit was replaced with a Gem. She is wielding Taguchi's Camera as a weapon. In her first inventory slot is the Twin Keys, and in her second inventory slot is, you guessed it, Taguchi's Camera again.
Taguchi has 7849 XP. He is holding, you guessed it, Taguchi's Camera again. His weapon is a dummied out item called the Light. In his first inventory slot is a Hammer, and in his second inventory slot is a glitched item with no known use.
Asuka got absolutely shafted on XP, only having 68. She is still holding her Vacuum, but is now wielding Akiko's Medkit as a weapon. She's carrying a Pail in her first inventory slot.
Emi's at 12036 XP, but has lost her Key, with it getting replaced by a can of Gas. She is holding the Amulet in her first inventory slot.
Kazuo is gone. Just, straight up. Akiko is technically gone as well but she'll return shortly. Kazuo has completely disappeared, though. He hasn't died or anything, but he is no longer on any map and cannot be controlled when switched to. Oh, on that note, we can't switch characters anymore. The glitch disabled that. We also cannot get into random encounters anymore, nor can we be abducted by spirits (though that doesn't matter). I haven't talked about this yet, but our current battle actions are Akiko using her Medkit, and Kazuo praying. This will come into play shortly.
Since we can't switch characters right now, we can't move glitch, which means our available options are extremely limited...
At least we have options, though.
Battle Glitch, Door Glitch, and Fixing What's Broken
Quick reminder: All of this was written for
the original submission. Nearly all of the changes in the current 9:46 happen from this point onward, so you will start seeing inaccurate information from here. If anything in the 9:46 does not match these notes, consult the next section for improvements.
Akiko reappears when we move south, which is great for us, but what's greater for us is that we can get into field encounters with Bats. Random encounters may be disabled right now, but Bats are not random encounters. In fact, they're the key to saving this run. In fact, they're literally keys in the context of this run. You're right, I did just make another bad key joke about something unexpected being used to open a door!
The first thing you'll probably notice about this battle is that I don't get to do anything in it. As soon as the battle begins, our current set of battle actions plays out automatically, ending the fight without even needing to select attacks. This is why Akiko used her Medkit and Kazuo prayed in that last battle, those actions get repeated in this battle and in all upcoming battles until we save/reset. This is generally useful for timesaves in battles, sure, but the real purpose here is that we're still in a state where we're arbitrarily writing values to certain addresses. In this case, the XP values of whatever enemies we face are going to be written to addresses controlling doors.
In this first fight with the Bats, their XP value of 4 gets written to a door we won't be seeing in the run. We do enter the room where it is, but it's neither open, nor do we even need to go through it in the first place. I'll point it out when we get there. The second fight with the Bats is the important one, as that 4 gets written to a much more important door, and better yet, a door that only needs a value of 4 to open.
You may notice something about that second fight, and it's that Asuka decides to fly in from the aether and slap the bats with Akiko's Medkit. This, right here, is why I save-reset precisely when I did earlier. For whatever reason, save-resetting there as opposed to any other time causes her to do less damage. Most of the time, she kills the Bats and permanently ruins the door glitch. This was the only way I was able to find a lower damage hit for her to keep the run alive.
After that second fight, the door glitch is completed, so now it's time to fix what's broken before we move on with the rest of the game. We go back north, exchange the Amulet for the Twin Keys, then disband from Akiko and Ghost Kazuo and fully detour for what looks like no reason. Emi grabs another board, who is my personal hero for what it allowed me to do with this route, and uses it to cross a gap to the west, leading to a side room. Emi picks up the Rope in the room and returns to Akiko. The step counter, at this point, is at -36. In case you're wondering, it can in fact roll down to -128 and overflow to 128 to count down again, but that's unfortunately not relevant here. Using the Rope on nothing immediately re-enables random encounters and immediately pulls us into one. Our repeated battle actions make quick work of it, though. Emi then uses the Rope on Akiko and finally runs to the east, where the door we previously glitched open sits.
Using the Rope on Akiko here re-enables character switching. If you're familiar with the previous Sweet Home submissions, you might be wondering why using the Rope the first time didn't do that like it usually does. If you're not familiar with the previous Sweet Home submissions, um, using the Rope is supposed to fix both random encounters and character switching. There's a much quicker Rope later along the route that wouldn't require that detour, the same one used in the RTA route and previous submissions, but for whatever reason it just wouldn't re-enable character switching for me. Random encounters? The thing that objectively loses time from now on? Sure, bring 'em back. Character switching? The thing that, y'know, makes the route possible through move glitching? Heck that noise.
Going through this exact sequence of events, however - grabbing the Rope, using it, finishing the ensuing random encounter, then specifically using the Rope on Akiko - actually does fix the character switching. This was the final hurdle I had to jump to be able to complete this run. Without this discovery, this would have been, at best, a 10:5X or something with just the upcoming mansion reroute in a much, much weaker form.
Emi finally goes through the glitched open door, which promptly locks behind her because the door isn't open from THIS side.
Inner Sanctuary, Encounter Stalling and Taguchi Warp
Having access to character switching means we can move glitch past the trap triggers when getting the first Blue Candle. Unfortunately, having access to random encounters means we're forced into a fight with a Skeleton. Specifically, it has to be a Skeleton, because its HP is low enough that we can actually finish the fight with our pre-emptive attacks. The Knight would crash the game by taking too long to kill.
These statues are meant to be the final puzzle of the game normally, unless you count the final boss as a puzzle. You need to find and place three Blue Candles on them, light the candles, and then pray at a value of 82 or higher to open them. These actually count as a door, and in theory could be glitched open in the same way as the door that leads to this area. This would skip needing the Blue Candles.
However, there are two issues with this. Issue one is that the Blue Candles are very along the path. Two are in this area and the third is right next to the required Photo and thus takes no time to get. The second issue is that the value required to open the path is 128, and also I don't know if it's possible to write to that address at all but even if it was that's very high!!! Given you still need to run around to get the other two final boss items anyway, there isn't much of a reason to try and glitch the statues open.
After placing the first Blue Candle, Emi heads west and finds very glitched map graphics. The actual map layout is the same, thankfully. We can move glitch past another trap trigger, but then we reach a small issue: We're close to the door we need to go into, and in that door is a safe area, but we're destined for a random encounter. Thankfully, if we pause on the right frame, we can stall out the encounter step by step, bringing the step counter further into the negatives each time. Using this, it's possible to make it into the door in a slightly tedious and annoying manner.
This room has the much quicker Rope I mentioned earlier, literally being directly along the path you take to the second Blue Candle. On the east side of this room is also the door I mentioned earlier that gets glitched to in the first fight with the Bats. This is an Emi's Key door that also opens with a value of 8. It's used in the RTA route to get the Twin Keys, but... We have those already, so that door is useless to us. Also in the RTA route, the Rope here is used to reset encounters/character switching while on the way to the Twin Keys, which means it's also useless to us since we already did that.
...Quick aside that isn't relevant to the TAS, I believe the Bowgun to the east of the Rope would actually be slightly faster for the RTA route. It fires quicker than the Rope and also goes longer, and with good timing you can actually move up around the post next to the Blue Candle, slide down on the ice to the space directly southwest of the second pole, and Bowgun all the way across to the eastmost pole. You might also be able to bounce it off of the Blue Candle before picking it up, fixing the encounters/character switching without needing to watch the full firing animation. This would also be possible with the Rope.
Normally, you get dialogue boxes when sliding down the ice, but as long as you keep moving on the ice you'll only get the one at the end. Slightly faster than the RTA method of doubling back and Roping over the wall, but harder to pull off.
After collecting the second Blue Candle, we switch to Taguchi and he promptly tries to leave the mansion.
Oh, hi Emi.
In the same way that going back downstairs after the Zombie fight brought Akiko back into the game, going across a screen transition with Taguchi will bring Emi along with him no matter where she is. In this case, it's all the way back to the start of the mansion. Taguchi moves south a few spaces before Emi disbands and leaves to the north, stranding Taguchi in a very cramped starting area and restraining the move glitch as a result. Can we overcome this? Yes. Yes, obviously.
As soon as Emi crosses into the unsafe part of this map, she gets in a very quick encounter. This is why we stalled out the one we would've gotten before the ice room. Early game enemies are easy.
RTA Reroute: Lady Mamiya Skip, Courtyard, and Dungeon
So why are we here, exactly? Why is Taguchi now crammed into the starting room? We're aiming to collect the last two items we need for the final boss, and this is the fastest way to get to them.
For those unfamiliar with the game, Lady Mamiya is in fact the final boss, but we're not skipping the final boss. We're skipping what is a normally required encounter with her. On the east side of the Inner Sanctuary is a path that leads to her quarters. You encounter her in this room, and she does some spooky stuff and sends you all the way back to the Dining Hall, which is the room where we fought the Bats earlier on in the run. This encounter puts out the fireplace in that room, and through that fireplace is the Dungeon. This is the intended way to get there, which means that in a run where nothing is correct, we don't want to use the intended way. The path to her quarters takes the Twin Keys to open, there's a lot of move glitching and unavoidable dialogue, and then the scene itself takes a bit of time while also putting you in kind of an inconvenient spot.
In the northwestern part of the first floor room is a Twin Keys door that leads to the Courtyard, which is the area that normally holds the Amulet if we didn't glitch one into our inventory earlier, but also holds the Photo and the third Blue Candle. Directly next to where the Photo/Candle are is a path leading down into the Dungeon, which is where the final item, the Coffin, sits. Exiting the Coffin room to the East brings us right back outside the Inner Sanctuary, with Akiko still waiting there. It's a perfect natural loop. We just need to get to that door.
Remember last spring where I said you can't move glitch Emi into OoB spaces while she's in the same room as Taguchi? Well, that's why Taguchi is now crammed into the starting area. It's slightly faster to do things this way, and it's also funnier, and that's what really matters.
We remain in the Courtyard's safe area the whole time we're here, psychically shuffling items between Emi and Taguchi along the way so we can actually store everything we need. Emi opens the Twin Keys door to the Photo and third Blue Candle first, grabbing them both and leaving behind the Twin Keys and the Hammer that got shuffled to her.
Quick RTA aside once again: This whole reroute should also be possible for RTA, but you'd have to drop off the second Blue Candle at the statues first before Taguchi warping Emi back to the start. Significantly less of a timesave, but should still be a timesave. If you can also get the Amulet without breaking anything, though, then you could pretty much follow the TAS from the second Blue Candle to the end.
Emi then dives into the Dungeon, move glitching past the locked gates. Since every encounterable enemy in here is too strong for us to kill with pre-emptive moves, we have to save-reset to clear it. Right after, we encounter stall over to the Pitchfork before getting into the next battle. The Pitchfork is the best weapon in the game, pretty much a requirement for this last section of the run. We pray away two random encounters, the last two in the run in fact, grab the Coffin, and return back to the second floor, with Akiko waiting for us.
Endgame
Item shuffling, item shuffling, and then we pick up the Tonic on the table for healing. We've levelled up a lot, sure, but everyone's still at their starting HP values, and the final boss pretty much one-shots everyone. Did I mention this game has permadeath, and that characters dying affects the ending? Yeah, we don't want any of that. The heal here is very necessary for everyone to survive.
Emi places the last two Blue Candles on the statues. Ghost Kazuo, somehow, lights the candles despite not being anywhere to be seen, and then with a powerful blast of prayer, the statues reveal the way to the final area of the game, where Lady Mamiya awaits. After a save-reset to clear our pre-emptive attacks, our step counter ticks down to -1 as Emi steps "alone" through the new hole in the wall. The final area is a safe area, though, so no fear of random encounters. We do, however, fear the triggered encounters here, so we move glitch past all of them, somehow managing to find a way to do so with Taguchi's extremely limited move space.
Finally, we're at Lady Mamiya. Hope you like rapid flashing lights and relatively normal battles with heavily specific sets of steps. This is just a standard puzzle boss. Wait for a particular opening, use specific items at specific times, form change, deal some damage to create a new opening, use the other specific items at specific times, ballgame. Emi does save a bit of time through double-attacking, though even with that I did need to take an extra turn from a relative lack of damage. Other than that, though, this went really clean.
Improvements over Original 10:03 Submission
Knowing the route was possible and having a completed run allowed me to go back and try out various ideas, most of which came from me writing this submission text. The bigger overall improvements are listed below.
- Optimized Rope Cancel: I set Akiko up a couple spaces north before grabbing the board. stevenqbeatz pointed out I could have used the board in a better spot, which saved some movement frames. Having Akiko further north means I could Rope cancel off of the note on the table to skip the Rope animation, then fire it at Akiko to re-enable character switching. Emi being positioned better also gives me more steps to work with on the way to the second Blue Candle, removing all but one encounter stall.
- Extra Reset: I take an extra reset before the Skeleton fight, which saves a couple seconds over letting auto-attacks continue out.
- Optimized Reroute: I decided it wasn't actually funnier to cram Taguchi in the starting room. This allows for more room to work with, allowing for a bigger move glitch in the Dungeon to remove the rest of the encounter stalling in the run. Also removed an unnecessary switch to Taguchi for item shuffling by shuffling during one of the move glitches.
- Better Endgame: stevenqbeatz improved grabbing and using the Tonic by using Kazuo's empty item slot. AmaizumiUni suggested looking into the Lady Mamiya fight and seeing if some frames could be saved by optimizing damage values, which prompted me to try moving the Silver Sword to Akiko, saving a turn over the original submission.
Final Thoughts
I referred to this as my "white whale" at the very beginning of this submission text, not just because I've been chasing this run of this game for two years, but also because I'd been dreaming of finally coming up with my own proper route for something.
I think that's why I was so caught up on chasing this game. The discoveries I had made on my own were substantial enough that the entire run could have been redone with each one, so I had to test everything and see what was viable and what wasn't, and the more I tested, the more things got muddied. More testing meant more discoveries, more discoveries meant more ideas, more things that could work together.
At any point, I could have taken the RTA route and optimized it. In fact,
that's what I had originally been working on. That was uploaded April 28th, 2023, which was less than a month after I had cancelled my 18:10. I kept telling myself I should just finish up that run, but I couldn't. It wasn't optimal. It wasn't good enough. It needed something new in it, something huge to set it apart, something that I knew was possible with all of the research I had done.
Sitting here now, writing this, with the sub-10 time I had been dreaming of for so long... It may have taken years, but with a lot of help and a lot of inspiration, I finally caught that white whale. The white whale of a run of this game, and the white whale of a TAS route I can truly call my own.
I'm finally free.
Thank you for watching.
Suggested Screenshots
The moment the Twin Keys are glitched:
